Morphing a Sierra with a Silverado

[04DOOR]

New to this site and not sure if this is the correct forum. Mods please move if you feel it belongs somewhere else. Basically I'm taking two wrecked trucks and combining them into one good truck. This will be a thread about all the steps it took me to combine a Sierra with a Silverado.

It all started Wed August 13 when I bought a rolled 2004 Silverado. The plan was to take the 6.0l lq4/4l80E out of the truck put a procharger on it and swap it into my firebird. I bought the truck not knowing if it would run. The way it was hit I was sure that the engine would turn over.

[04DOOR]

I towed it home thursday and on friday I started working on it. The first problem was that when the truck was upside down it turned the intake manifold into an oil pan. Now that the truck was right side up I could get all the oil out.

First was to pull the spark plugs and see if the motor would turn over. I pulled all eight and turned the crank with a socket. Oil came spewing out of all eight holes. That was pretty bad but at least it turned freely. I then put a battery on it and cranked it with the plugs out. More oil came out. After a few cranks I put all the plugs back in and hooked up the wires.

I had to pull the air intake out to clean everything. The air filter was soaking with oil, the maf was covered, and the tube inbetween the throttle body and maf was still full. After cleaning all the oil out and spraying a maf sensor cleaner on the maf I put a new filter in and hooked everything back up.

I filled it with 3 gallons of gas and put the battery back on. Checked all the fluids and added when necessary. I turned the key a couple of times to prime the fuel rail and pump. Then I started the truck and it ran the first time.

Immediately it started smoking. And kept smoking and kept smoking. I ran it for about 20 mins and it still never stopped smoking! But it was running so i drove it off the street and into the driveway and called it a night.

[99sierra4x4]

nice, well figure there is about 6 or 7 quarts of oil soaked into everything on the upper half of the motor where oil isnt usually supposed to be soaked into, so when ur burning oil it will put with smoke. So did you figure out which truck you are going to use the frame and everything?

should be a cool project, keep us posted with lots of pics.

[04DOOR]

Yea the intake is nice and clean but the exhaust is another story. I didn't clean any of it out of the exhaust. I think the longer I run it the farther on down the exhaust it starts burning oil. Plus I don't know if the cat is ruined after being drowned in oil. I've probably run the engine for a total of 45 mins and it is still smokin!

[04DOOR]

So i was content with the 04 Silverado and the plan to pull the engine was still going good. I decided to mess around with the body work on the truck. I have never fixed anything that bad and I couldn't make it any worse right? So I tore out the interior and hooked up the porta power and started fixing things. I was starting to get somewhere and I got all the doors to close again and latch correctly.



Keep in mind that I wasn't planning on keepin or fixin the truck. I was just getting some practice with the porta power. Well I guess I pushed the porta power to the limits because when I went to push the roof back into place I blew a seal. It was fun while it lasted.

Next I started doing an inventory on what parts I could sell from the silverado. After everything was said and done I figured I could keep the engine/trans and get my money back from parting the truck out.

[04DOOR]

Roughly a week and a half later I was wandering on the net and saw something that caught my eye. It was an 04 Sierra with the lq4/4l80E. I took a look at the truck in person and was totally blown away. It was totally different from the Sado. It had all the luxury options and upgraded options. It really was in good condition too.



I had never owned a truck before the Sado and now I was thinkn of buying another one. But the Sierra was different from the Sado. It was a crew cab instead of extenda cab. The Sado was a work truck stripped down model and the Sierra was the cruising road trip and towing model.

[AdioSS]

I'm betting you'll need a Sawzall or maybe even a plasma cutter

Between the two, you've got at least 1 good frame, but you might need to get friendly with an autobody professional.

I betcha the block is still good. Keep tearing into it and keep us informed.

[04DOOR]

After tearing down the front end I got to what I was looking for. The frame was just like I thought. Perfect! Well almost, the bumper brackets in the center were slightly tweaked. Nothing a larger hammer couldn't fix. It was a good clean hit that got close to the frame but didn't mash it. The only thing that got smashed was the passenger front brake line.

[04DOOR]

So my next task was to fix that brake line. No sweat I had the Sado to take parts off of. Before I disconnected anything I took a look at both trucks to compare brake lines. This is when I made a big discovery about the differences between Silverados and Sierras.

It may be common knowledge here on the forums but I found out that in 2004 Silverados sit higher than Sierras.

I discovered this because on the Silverado the brake lines run on top of the frame rail to the abs block. But on Sierras the lines run on the sides of the frame rails because there is no space on top between the body and the frame.

The brake lines won't switch over from a Sado to a Sierra. They will however switch from a Sierra to a Sado.

[04DOOR]